The navigator is blind and the driver's in pain, but they're racing though France, busting barriers

PARIS — The driver's joints are so painful from rheumatoid arthritis that she can't manage a stick shift. And the co-pilot who is helping to guide her through France as the navigator is blind, her sight snatched away by a brain tumor five years ago that stole her career as a photographer.

All the more reason, the two friends figure, for them to proudly show how capable they are by taking part in a women-only cross-country vintage car race from Paris to the Mediterranean.

Saint-Tropez, here come Merete Buljo and Tonje Thoresen.

''Making the impossible possible!'' is the motto the Norwegian women adopted for their adventure this week. They like to think of themselves as successors — minus the crimes — of ''Thelma & Louise,'' the heroines of Ridley Scott's 1991 movie of female emancipation and the joys and perils of the open road.

"That is us!'' said Buljo, the driver. For the race, they even hunted for the same car that Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis' characters drove off a cliff.

''When we were looking for a car we thought, ‘Oh, a Ford Thunderbird. It would just be perfect!''' Thoresen said.

Two blind navigators

Thoresen is one of two blind navigators in the five-day Princesses Rally that roared off Sunday from Paris. Juliette Lepage, blind from birth, is the other, navigating a 1977 MG. Rallies are long-distance road races, typically with stages and checkpoints.

Without sight, Thoresen says her other senses are working overtime on the roads of springtime France: The smells of flowers and vegetation and of farming in the fields; the sharp chill of tunnels they whizz through.

And the orchestra of vintage engines — some throaty, others purring — racing down back-country roads. That's music to the ears for petrol-heads like Thoresen, who says she can identify some cars just by their sounds and when they're developing mechanical problems.

''I'm passionate about those sounds. It gives me adrenaline," she said.

The Firebird fails

Thoresen was incredulous when Buljo proposed that they enter the rally together.

''I said, ‘What? But I'm blind!' And she said, ‘Yeah. And so what?''' Thoresen recounted. ''She's very much like, 'We can do everything — everything that is impossible is possible to do.'''

Unfortunately, the 1990 Pontiac Firebird they planned to drive couldn't keep pace with their ambition. It has an automatic gearbox — easier with the arthritis that Buljo has battled since childhood.

''Because of my legs, I can't drive a normal gearbox. I also have some problems with my hands, so I can't be on the gearbox all the time,'' she said. ''For me, driving has always been so very important for my freedom because I always have, more or less, pain in my legs, my knees, my ankles, everything.''

But the car broke down a week before the start. They had to fall back on a last-minute modern replacement that's ineligible for the rally, which is open only to cars built between 1946 and 1991.

Still, organizers allowed them to come along for the ride, with the competitors, and keep their race name: Team Valkyries, drawn from powerful female figures in Norse mythology.

Beating shame

Having secured sponsors and crowd funding, Buljo and Thoresen didn't want their efforts to go to waste.

They're using this rally as training, figuring out together how Thoresen can help navigate the route and its checkpoints, even though she can't see it. Participants aren't allowed to use GPS navigational aids and Thoresen hasn't yet learned Braille, which Lepage, the other blind navigator, uses to read and give directions.

But Thoresen says she's become as reliable as London's Big Ben at measuring the passage of time, so can advise when it's the right moment to make a turn. And Buljo says she's able to memorize route notes.

''I have an inside map and Tonje has an inside clock, so we make a great team," she said.

Besides, simply getting from Point A to Point B was never their priority.

"We wanted to also show that it's very important to not be ashamed of your handicap," Thoresen said. ''It's very important to kind of be proud of the competences that you still have and to dare to do stuff.''